


Last Hero

by 7thweasley



Category: Harry Potter - J.K. Rowling
Genre: Gen, Harry Potter Epilogue What Epilogue | EWE, Not very cheery I’m sorry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-09
Updated: 2018-09-09
Packaged: 2019-07-08 21:07:59
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 860
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15938309
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/7thweasley/pseuds/7thweasley
Summary: Just because Voldemort and his forces have been defeated doesn’t mean that the Wizarding World is peaceful.-Fifty years after the war, Harry looks back on the months after their victory.





	Last Hero

Harry remembers the day like it was just yesterday. Ginny had been reading the morning’s paper while he made coffee.

“A body was found last night,” she commented with a deep sigh, reading the article.

Harry put down the pot. Things had been turbulent, of course, with the end of the war, but nothing drastic so far. “Muggle or magical?”

“It says here that he was found in a Muggle London alley, but he had a wand on him. So wizard, presumably.”

“Anyone we know?” he asked. The pale expression Ginny wore matched the twisting feeling in his gut.

“The body hasn’t been identified yet. Badly disfigured, apparently.” She put the newspaper down. “I have to leave for work.”

She gave him a quick peck on the cheek, and then she was off.

~

The unnamed body remained on Harry’s mind throughout the day. Without an actual job to occupy his time, he had been devoting the majority of his to cleaning Grimmauld Place lately. Ginny insisted on “making the house a home”, and it charmed Harry to think of such a horrible place having new memories to replace the bad ones.

It was just after one in the afternoon, and Harry was sitting in the kitchen taking his lunch when he heard a sharp tap against the window. He opened it to let in a proud looking owl bearing a rolled letter. 

_Potter,_ it read.

_As you might have read in the Prophet, we found a body last night. We have a possible identity, but we would like your confirmation. Don’t want to say much over owl in case the papers get our letters again. Please come to the Ministry at your earliest convenience._

_Kingsley Shacklebolt_

Overcome by curiosity and dread, Harry puts down his sandwich. He pens a quick note to Ginny to let her know where he’s gone, and then he Apparates to the Ministry’s bathroom entrance.

~

“Mr Potter, thank you for coming on such short notice and under such grim circumstances,” Shacklebolt said as he shook his hand. “This is Eleanor Brambleton, our mortician.”

Harry shook the middle-aged witch’s hand, and followed the pair down to the mortuary, only half hearing what they were saying. His mind was churning. He kept seeing his friends’ bodies laying on the cold metal table.

“Like Kingsley said in his letter, we just need verification. We would normally summon the victim’s family in situations like these, but if this victim is who we think he is, he hasn’t got any,” Eleanor Brambleton stated. She waved her wand and a portion of the ceiling opened for a platform to float down.

On the platform lied a covered body. Harry braced himself, and with another flick of her wand, Brambleton uncovered the head.

With a sickening lurch, Harry took in the untidy mop of white-blond hair with mud caked in it.

“Is it him, Harry?” Brambleton asked gently.

He willed himself to speak. He couldn’t lose himself in front of them. “Can I see his torso, please? To check…”

Once the sheet was pulled down further, Harry’s fears were confirmed. Violent scars marred the otherwise flawless pale skin in the twirling pattern of Sectumsempra.

“Draco Malfoy.”

~

It had been only three months since Draco Malfoy was found innocent at his trial, with enormous thanks to Harry Potter. The pair had started to strike up an unusual friendship. They figured it was about time they cast aside their childish feud, especially since they both owed each other their lives.

Malfoy had rented a modest flat in a Muggle neighborhood of London to remove himself from the wizarding world hubbub. As he was walking home late one night, he was pulled into an alley, Petrified, and beaten to death. His attacker would later confess his crime in his suicide note.

Daniel Robins, Malfoy’s murderer, had a younger sister named Demelza who had died in the Battle of Hogwarts. After hearing of Malfoy’s freedom, Robins became overcome by his fury, and took into his hands what he thought to be justice.

~

Harry blames himself of course, even now.

A Wizarding Wars museum is set to be opened next week, on May 2nd, 2048. Fifty years have passed since the Battle of Hogwarts, but those who lived through it relive it constantly, Harry most of all.

It is for this reason that Harry used his influence to affect the museum, despite wanting nothing to do with it. The point that he argued most fervently was in regards to the lists of the fallen on each side. When Harry had first reviewed it, Malfoy’s name was on the Dark side.

After almost forty years of keeping his name from the papers, Harry made the front page of the Prophet when he lost his temper and stormed out of the museum. He demanded that Malfoy’s name was switched to the side of the heroes.

When Harry and the others visit the museum on opening day, emotions and memories that have long been buried will crop up. However, Harry will at least find solace in Malfoy’s rightful designation as the last hero to die in the fight against Voldemort.

FIN


End file.
